


The Five Times Matt Murdock Fell in Love with Foggy Nelson

by twitchtipthegnawer



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: College, Drunk Sex, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Serious Injuries, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-11-13
Packaged: 2018-04-28 04:52:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5078503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twitchtipthegnawer/pseuds/twitchtipthegnawer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can't know someone as well, or as long, as Matt has known Foggy without falling in love with them at least a little bit, at least once. But five times, well... Matt's starting to think this may be a bit much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Every fanfic author needs a five times fic, right? Well, here's mine!!! Matt and Foggy bein cute babies. Warnings for implied sex and references to the time when Matty boy got Super Injured.

The first time Matt falls in love with Foggy, he doesn’t know that’s what’s happening. He’s been in love before, once, with a girl whose hair was so soft he spent all of his junior year of high school resisting touching it. But only once isn’t enough for him to realize what’s happening when it moves so fast, when it’s so different this time from last time. Now isn’t like with the girl, the slow burn of realizing that her smell makes him smile, that the things she says echo something deep within him. Instead, it’s all at once, in a single sentence.

Maybe he doesn’t know because he didn’t expect it, because he didn’t realize what it meant that someone would know him as the little boy who saved a stranger. He’s not a tragedy anymore, when Foggy says it. He’s not an orphan, not a blind boy, not Stick’s soldier, not the son of a man who deserved better. He’s a hero. At least, in this little corner of their world, he’s a hero. It makes his chest ache in a soft, quiet way.

But because he doesn’t know that he’s fallen in love, he just smiles and lets himself bask in the fact that Foggy hasn’t washed himself in days, in the fact that he smells like fast food and cheap beer and bad decisions, and somehow it’s all so homely that Matt knows without really thinking about it that he will enjoy living with him. And if he thinks Matt’s hot, well, it’s okay, because he was quick enough to deny it and lie that it was it was still benign enough, and anyway aren’t they both teenagers still?

Matt tells himself he understands.

The second time Matt falls in love with Foggy they’re drunk and the world is spinning even more than usual. He knew Foggy drank often, but he didn’t know that he could outlast him by so much when he was trying, didn’t realize that the spins could get quite so disorienting. It’s not even that the world is spinning, not really, it’s that the flames licking off of every surface in bright flashes have become solar storms, something so bright to look at he can feel his skin burning when he stands still.

He only makes it home because Foggy’s arm under his clenched hand is solid enough, even merrily swinging as it is. There’s a smile on Matt’s face and ordinarily Foggy would know it for the polite falsehood it was but he’s not looking, not now with his blood so warm (his skin degrees cooler than it should be) (his breath a mixture of a dozen drinks) (his hands covered in the lingering scent of-).

Still spinning, Matt hits his mattress, his mouth moving in some inane line about how they shouldn’t drink so much next time. It takes him a full minute to realize his fingers are still wrapped around Foggy’s wrist, so that when he fell Foggy fell with him. He’s laughing about it, about how Matty is secretly a bodybuilder, about how his balance is shot, but all Matt can think is that they’re pressed together all lopsided, Foggy’s shoulder pushing into his throat, Foggy’s knee digging into his.

Wriggling so that they are in a more comfortable position takes almost no effort; not noticing how they’re now situated, Matt on his side staring into Foggy’s eyes, Foggy on his stomach but turning slowly, clumsily, takes more effort than Matt can summon at the moment. Matt understands the implications, understands Foggy’s intent from the way he can feel the heat in his cheeks move elsewhere, the way he can feel his heartbeat thumping through the air around his head. He doesn’t understand the reason it makes him feel like the bed is made of clouds, like the sandpaper cotton of the sheets has suddenly become silk.

He stops thinking about it the moment their lips meet, and he can’t remember it in the morning.

The third time Matt falls in love with Foggy he thinks he’s going to kill him. The sound the object makes when it hits the table is unmistakeable, the metal and plastic scent mixing with the nutmeg and hazel-toe and peppermint in the air and making him swallow hard. Still, he reaches out, tracing the shape on automatic, for once not enacting the polite falsehood that he doesn’t know what it is and instead actually unsure. The rectangle, with all its little holes, is unmistakable.

Foggy is joking about how it’s a good thing they’re paid interns, because he didn’t realize how expensive one of those was. Foggy is laughing and he’s nervous, Matt knows, he can hear the slightest tremor at the ends of his words. Unfortunately, Matt isn’t sure if he wants to reassure him or strangle him. He settles for something in the middle, and while Foggy shrinks when Matt asks him what the braille display cost, he lets enough gratitude to leak into his voice that Foggy doesn’t crumple away entirely.

There’s some kind of excuse about suddenly finding some savings Foggy had forgotten about, about a bit more birthday money than expected, about a lie that’s forcing Foggy’s heart to beat faster and faster. Suddenly, Matt remembers the way his stomach has been rumbling lately, and he deflates. His own heart is beating faster now too, in a way that means he can’t stay mad anymore.

This time he knows exactly why he’s giving in so easily, and he knows exactly how little it changes. Foggy loves Matt, true, but Matt is reasonably sure that if he were to act on it it would shatter his friend. The image is all too vivid, the aftermath of a date even more devastating than the aftermath of drunken college nights. Because a date promises so much more, promises lingering thoughts that can’t be laughed off as a bad decision. And if one date didn’t break them, two would.

Still, listening to Foggy stutter about how money hasn’t been _that_ tight, Matt almost asks him. Almost.

The fourth time Matt falls in love with Foggy, the world is dark around him. Only the familiarity of his home is stopping him from running into walls, at this point. He’s lost track of all of his injuries, which is dangerous, because he needs to. Tell Claire? He thinks he needs to tell Claire. She won’t be happy with him, but she usually isn’t. The memory of her perpetual hospital and chicken soup smell makes him smile for a moment.

He doesn’t know where his phone is. He can’t pinpoint anything, the pain is blinding him worse than the chemicals ever did, it’s a miracle he’s still standing. He wavers on his feet, considers shuffling another step forwards in the hopes that the noise will echo off of the walls and help him, but then a voice comes out of the dark and he doesn’t need to worry about that anymore.

His voice is shaking when it calls out but it’s enough to guide Matt, to force him into motion again. He doesn’t navigate with his own footsteps; Foggy’s feet on the ground are so much more solid, more real, they draw Matt to them with magnetic force. He doesn’t think about the fact that Foggy will see the man in the mask before he sees Matt. He doesn’t think about the fact that Foggy will see the blood dripping from his body in thick sheets and hate it. He doesn’t think.

Foggy’s silhouette is bright white in the darkness the moment before Matt loses consciousness.

The fifth time Matt falls in love with Foggy it’s a tiny thing. Foggy snorting at Matt’s joke, a callback to when he’d thought that becoming a lawyer would fix the injustice gnawing away inside him, when he’d thought he and Foggy could save the world together. Avocados at law. Such a tiny thing, inconsequential, nothing compared to crime bosses and kingpins. It means the world at that moment.

He’s almost sure that it would mean less if they hadn’t had to fight so hard for it. It hurts to think, a little bit, that they had to lose so much to feel this perfect moment. There’s still a piece of him that wants to believe the losses were avoidable, that there was something he could have done to save them. But for all that he can do, he can’t turn back time. He can’t erase his mistakes. Stick told him that, a long time ago, but he didn’t really believe it until now, listening to sirens in the distance and Foggy laughing softly right beside him.

Peace never lasts long, it seems, especially not in Hell’s Kitchen. Matt can almost forget that, however, standing here with Karen and Foggy and seeing the way sunlight warms his new sign, the way the heat coming off of it radiates into the air around them. Nelson and Murdock. Matt wonders if Foggy is the type to like hyphenated last names, and then berates himself for thinking. It’s too early for that. Fisk could break out of prison any day, and then Matt would be back to risking his life for real, and who knew how much Foggy would tolerate.

Maybe someday, though. Maybe.


	2. The One Time Foggy Fell in Love with Matt

The first time Foggy falls in love with Matt it takes years. He knows from the moment he meets him, the moment his tongue slips and gives away how attractive he thinks he is, that there’s a possibility there, but he didn’t intend to act on it. He can’t count the number of people he’s found attractive who he’s given up on, and in Matt’s case he thinks the payoff will be more than worth it. After all, what’s one lost potential relationship in exchange for a lifelong friend?

But then the feelings follow him like persistent puppies, like Matt when he’s worried about Foggy walking to the dorm alone at 2:00 AM and somehow thinks his blind ass can save Foggy from a mugger. He notices himself noticing things he really shouldn’t be noticing, things like the length of Matt’s eyelashes when he takes of his glasses, the shape of his abs under his shirt when it rains and the fabric clings like he’s a male model in a commercial for overpriced cologne. And _damn_ but those abs are more defined than they have any right to be.

Some days the burgeoning love turns on its head, becomes a pain like a lingering stitch in his side from running right after dinner. The pain of looking at those abs and hating the fact that Matt doesn’t know what he has, that without eyes he’ll never have to look in the mirror and pick out imperfections. It’s the pain of Matt bringing home girl after girl and knowing that it will never be more than a fling because Matt can afford to have flings. The pain of seeing Matt somehow pick out the prettiest girls in the room, and sometimes the prettiest guys when he gets drunk enough and forgets that he’s more catholic than he cares to admit, and remembering that first night when Matt didn’t pick him out in a room with only the two of them in it.

The adoration is never far, though, and soon he’s back to stealing peeks at those hazel eyes, imagining what it would be like to teach Matt how attractive he is with Foggy’s own fingers (forgetting that he may have taught him once, in the worst way possible, a way they don’t speak about except to laugh at their “mistakes”). Foggy never lets himself fantasize too long, or in too much detail, because sometimes Matt sees straight through him in a way no one else ever could, not even his mother. But he can’t stop his mind from wandering, on nights when Matt’s out late and he’s alone in the room, surrounded by beer bottles like a tiny glass army.

If he’d known the price he’d pay for idle thoughts fueled by alcohol, he would never have thought them. Because as time goes on he gets to know Matt better and better, and those lonely nights become nights full of conversation, full of laughter and the beer bottle army invading the second bed, taking it over slowly with each tidbit Foggy learns about Matt. He knows his roommate better than he knows himself, knows his favorite color (red) and why (a hooded robe he never saw, something that was silky soft and held Matt’s dad in the moment Matt couldn’t, something that Matt hated as much as he loved it because it was his dad’s downfall and success).

Foggy doesn’t really think about what’s happening until one day he’s walking out of a glass and chrome building with a box full of bagels under one arm and Matt’s hand casually grasping the other. He was actively trying not to think about it, if he’s honest with himself, but he’s often not so instead of resignation he feels mild surprise. Those feelings, the ones he’d thought he’d buried well enough that at least he’d never have to acknowledge them, have at last built to something so sweet and deep that the thought that he should tug Matt forward and have their lips meet in a victory kiss feels so natural, so obvious, because of course kissing is appropriate now, and never mind that Foggy’s mind is screaming at his heart.

The love doesn’t hurt too badly, at the very least. It doesn’t hurt until things start going sideways, Matt starts disappearing, and there are bombs in Hell’s Kitchen and there’s metal in Foggy’s side and there’s no phone in Matt’s pocket. Foggy wants to fight. He wants to rip the Masked Man to pieces with his bare hands, in a way that he’s never wanted to hurt someone before. Because Matt was injured that night, he can see it in the way Matt holds himself gingerly in the week that follows, and the Masked Man could have taken away the best thing in Foggy’s life by complete accident.

Matt being so calm about it doesn’t temper Foggy’s flames, exactly, but it makes it hard to stay mad when Matt preaching from the high ground is so insufferably familiar (and adorable, Foggy can admit). He says that the Masked Man deserves a trial, same as everyone else, and while a tiny piece of Foggy’s heart aches that Matt doesn’t burn at the thought of Foggy’s wounds the way Foggy burns at the thought of Matt’s, he knows deep down that Matt loves being a hero. And to Matt, being a hero means believing in the justice, more than he believes in anything else. Foggy knows that.

Foggy knows that, and it’s part of why seeing Matt’s justice bleeding out on the ground, completely at his mercy, makes his whole body freeze in terror. Because the Masked Man is here and Matt’s not (unless-) and the house is trashed, Matt must be injured (maybe-) and what if Matt’s injured, Foggy needs the Masked Man to tell him where he’s taken Matt (but what if he’s-).

The whole world stops when Foggy unmasks the Masked Man with fingers that are far too gentle (not gentle enough) and the way Karen was defending him suddenly makes sense. So does the way Matt spoke, because he believes he’s doing justice’s work and that justice will find him not guilty. So does Matt’s silences, his aches, his inexplicable sadness lately. Foggy’s heart isn’t beating, but Matt’s won’t be either if he lets him lie there much longer.

Miss burner phone is just pretty enough that Foggy notices, just pretty enough to bring back memories of college days and the kinds of people Matt chose then. The fact that she’s not surprised to see the state he’s in makes Foggy die a little bit more inside, but the fact that she saves Matt’s life keeps him breathing, too, at least for now. When she leaves he cries, and it occurs to him that no matter how quietly he’s always tried to cry in the past, Matt’s always known, somehow, always tried to comfort him. Matt lies on the couch and doesn’t comfort him now.

A piece of Foggy wants to leave, now that the immediate danger is past, but Matt was attacked in his home once and though Foggy knows (doesn’t want to believe, doesn’t want to think of the implications) that Matt is a better fighter than he is, he still needs to keep him safe; years of guiding him and laughing with him are hard to break in a single night. But needing to keep him safe means Foggy needs not to think that justice is blind, that Matt has always loved symbols and that the chemical that blinded him was one Foggy had never heard of before or since (that Matt’s an excellent liar, even to Foggy).

When at last Matt wakes up Foggy stays as long as he can, listens as well as he can, but when he leaves he doesn’t look back. Strangely enough, it isn’t the thought of the betrayal of trust that echoes in his mind as he wanders down the dark streets, it’s the description of the world on fire that Matt sees. Foggy wonders what it would be like, to hear the flames or a little girl’s cries licking higher and higher from blocks away. Foggy wonders if he would be able to do what Matt did, if he would even want to, and when he comes up with his answer he isn’t sure if it’s because he’s weak or if it’s because he has more faith in the system than Matt did, after all.

Falling in love with someone makes many things harder than they should be, Foggy already knew that. But falling in love with Matt had been so easy, so effortless, he’d never really put much thought into what it would be like when he had to inevitably let himself fall out of love. “Let himself,” isn’t right though, is it, because he can’t stop thinking about Matt, can’t stop the way his lips want to curve up when he sees him (before he remembers). “Force himself,” now that’s more accurate isn’t it, because he doesn’t want to be in love with him anymore but he still is.

Maybe, though, maybe that isn’t so bad. The days blur together until the pain starts to ease, and Foggy remembers slowly what Matt sounds like when he’s drunk and happy. Matt starts to look at Foggy with more hope than pain in his eyes again, and Foggy’s heart doesn’t feel quite so heavy. At the end of the day they both love Hell’s Kitchen, and not in the fucked up way that Fisk does, but in the way that they grew up here and remember the faces of everyone who ever loved them with a backdrop of smog and old skyscrapers. Foggy knows that. When Matt makes a joke, Foggy laughs.


	3. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You asked for it, and I delivered! Fair warning, I kept it relatively non explicit, but they have sex. Just, in case that's not your thing? Lmao

The first time Matt knew Foggy loved him back, their hands were clasped together, fingers intertwined such that neither could pull away easily. Matt’s palm is sweaty, but Foggy’s is too, and if Matt’s heart is pounding fast then Foggy’s is galloping. Matt had suspected, for a while now, but he hadn’t been sure until this moment, with Foggy clinging to his hand like if he lets go Matt might just slip away into nothingness.

Matt can’t really understand the why, if he’s honest, but he knows the _why now_. There’s blood still oozing from between his ribs, a place scarily close to his lungs. He can feel the heat and stiffness in his swelling eyelid, and he knows that Foggy’s acutely aware of the fact that the hand he’s not holding has two fingers taped together. Foggy, who didn’t ask to come over but instead showed up at Matt’s door in the kind of mood that said he’d been drunk earlier in the day and wouldn’t say no to being drunk now, which quickly turned into the kind of mood where he was planting his ass on Matt’s couch and wasn’t planning on moving in the next several hours.

So Matt had turned on a movie, something familiar and lighthearted so he could let it turn into the kind of white noise background that was sure to relax Foggy enough for him not to ask what happened. And it worked, in the end, Foggy sliding along the length of the couch until at last they were close enough that he could capture Matt’s hand. Because, after all, as long as he had Matt tethered to him there would be no more battles for the night. It was enough to make Matt’s heart squeeze painfully, if only once.

Now that he knew, though, it changed things. It turned the aches and stings from his injuries into a warmth that spread from his cheeks to his chest, and it made his fingers in Foggy’s want to twitch with the urge to move. Not away- though there was a part of Matt that wanted to run, wanted to pretend he still didn’t know- but instead up, up Foggy’s arm to his shoulder, his cheek, pockmarked and soft and perfect like Matt could remember it being under his palm years ago.

Foggy turns to look at Matt, his hair quietly brushing his shoulders as he moves. He makes a noise deep in his throat that means he’s idly curious, but when Matt doesn’t speak Foggy doesn’t press to ask him why he’s so quiet; he chuckles instead, quietly, tiredly, and he asks if Matt even needs the audio telling him what’s happening in the movie when he can see so much already. Yes, he does, but it’s hard to answer when Foggy’s breath smells more minty than sour and why did he brush his teeth before coming to Matt’s place, anyway?

He’s pressing forward before he knows it, before he can talk himself out of it. Foggy’s so close to him, closer than people usually get unless they’re trying to make him bleed or trying to stop him from bleeding. Right now he doesn’t know which category he wants Foggy to be in, he just knows that the taste of him is familiar but new and he’d never realized that Foggy’s natural scent is so close to nutmeg before. He also knows that under his lips Foggy isn’t moving, and it’s not because he’s not interested, but the memory of the last time Foggy’s posture was so rigid makes Matt flinch backwards all the same.

Their words are soft and tentative, and Matt’s are few and far between tonight, but it only takes two of the three he’d wanted to say before Foggy is tangling his fingers in Matt’s hair, familiar callouses and minuscule scars and blunt fingernails brushing his sensitive scalp, soft lips pressed to Matt’s so hard the split in them throbs in time with his heartbeat. There’s a second where he’s not sure what to do, not sure how to react to the way Foggy’s body has molded itself to his, but instinct takes over and he’s responding in kind, sitting up on his knees and straddling Foggy’s lap in a fluid movement that makes Foggy’s breath hitch.

It feels nothing like any other kiss Matt has had, and he’s had many. It’s not like any of the girls, the nice kisses that lit sparks in his belly and made him smile. It’s not like the boys on any of those drunken nights, guilty and powerful and breaking him from the inside out. It’s not even like the kisses they shared before, the ones Matt can barely remember and is sure would be vivid in his mind if they felt anything like this. Because this feels like Foggy’s putting Matt back together piece by piece, taking each shard of him and filling the cracks with gold. This feels like Foggy’s hands slipping from his hair and rubbing his flanks so firmly and possessively means something different entirely, and Matt’s shocked to find that he knows exactly what that meaning is.

Maybe it’s because he knows Foggy so well, or maybe it’s because he knows just enough to know that there’s so much more to learn, but when Foggy’s hands slip into the dip in Matt’s waist like they were always meant to be there and pull Matt understands what it means. It’s _please_ and _I love you too,_ all the things Foggy can’t say because his tongue is being sucked into Matt’s mouth and sounds that are certainly not words are being wrung out of his throat. When Matt grinds his hips down in response, it’s not instinct that drives him anymore, but the way Foggy’s hands slide further down and around in reward and sweet affection.

And Foggy is affectionate, more than anything else. He kisses like there’s fire inside of his mouth and Matt’s taste is the only thing that can put it out, touches like Matt’s skin is spring water and he’s dying of thirst, but underneath it all is a deep well of joy that permeates his body, makes his lips turn up at the corners even as Matt takes one and bites down. His thumbs swipe back and forth across Matt’s clothed skin, and before he can talk himself out of it Matt’s sitting up, pulling his shirt off and flexing his muscles because just because he can’t see doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what he looks like, and it doesn’t mean he doesn’t know that Foggy’s a visual person and visual people tend to like the rippling of his abs and pecs.

But sweet as it is it’s not slow, their movements spurred on by years and years of waiting for the tipping point, years of worrying that something would happen and end it before it could begin. When Foggy sees the blood blooming just under Matt’s skin in spectacular bruises it only serves to remind him of how limited their time might be, and Matt’s glad because he doesn’t want to be treated like porcelain tonight. He wants to feel real, he wants the pain he endures night after night for the sake of the city to turn into pleasure, he wants to be reminded that he’s earned this moment of passion.

When at last they collapse together on the couch, their bodies pressed uncomfortably tight and hot from head to toe, Matt finds himself glad that they’d never made it to the bed. There’s something so right about wrestling on the bed like teenagers, about the way they could lose themselves in the moment as though only enough time has passed since their first night together for them to sober up. Reality will assert itself soon, Matt knows, but in this moment he can pretend like Foggy’s hair is longer, like his body is covered in unscarred skin, like the cruelty of the past year was all a bad dream he had between the moments where he was falling asleep in Foggy’s arms and the moments where he was waking up in them.

Yet when Matt finds himself waking up to the light of the sun streaming through his window at an angle that means it’s closer to noon than morning, he’s surprised to find that reality is more gentle than he’d thought it would be. Foggy’s nutmeg and salt scent is as intoxicating in sunlight as it was in moonlight, and when at last he wakes up and begins to complain about how he’s getting too old for sleeping on the couch his fingertips tracing idle shapes on Matt’s shoulder blades is the most beautiful thing Matt can think of. He’s always been a bit of a hopeless romantic, but it’s turning out that Foggy is too, and Matt is about as far from complaining as he can get at this moment.


End file.
